


Duality (Mustard Seed)

by theunwillingheart



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Character Study, Despair, Doubt, Gen, Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: Dairine did not mean the Oath when she took it.Reflections on Dairine in light of the events ofThe Wizard’s Dilemma.Spoilers for Book 5.





	Duality (Mustard Seed)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Dairine and the rest belong to Diane Duane. I’m not creative enough to come up with this stuff myself.

Dairine is descended from one of the most powerful wizards in earth history.  When Carl tells her this, after her Ordeal, it does not come as a surprise.

All her life, Dairine has been a force of nature; Dairine has been an event.  She loves her older sister as much as a girl of her age can, but Dairine could never be like her—ducking and running, refusing to fight back.  Nita gets picked on and singled out and bullied.  Dairine stands firm and makes of herself something to be feared.

Provided with an advance copy of the software manual, Dairine taps into immense power and comes alive as never before.  She stretches out tiny arms and brushes aside planets.  It confirms to her what she has always known about herself, that she is a massive being in a small body.

 

It doesn’t take much to make it all crash down around her.

She paces in agitation as the phone rings mercilessly, again and again.

In her shock, Dairine pulls away from herself and begins to see herself as if through a dark tunnel.  There are words she ought to be saying, things she should be doing, but her body is too far away.

Time passes, and nothing gets better.  Dairine watches numbly as the tunnel gets narrower and longer and darker.  She sees herself curl into a ball on the floor.  She turns away and lets herself run on autopilot.

She is jolted back into herself with the final phone call and finds she isn’t the same as when she had left.

 

When she sleeps (if she sleeps) she takes lightsaber in hand and charges down flickering corridors, through flashing steel labyrinths.

But her Enemy is a Shadow, and the pale light of her sword cannot touch It.

_I have been forgiven_ , whispers the Shadow, as It swirls around and away from her.  _Your services are no longer required, Knight._

“I wish we’d never helped you,” she bites out angrily.  She knows it is wrong, but this is a dream—she can say whatever she wants to here.

_A shame_ , answers back the Shadow, and the air hangs heavy with Its bitter satisfaction.  _There is so much of me in you._

Dairine gasps herself awake and stays that way.

 

“I want you to tell me what you were doing in there,” demands Nita.

“Something,” snaps Dairine, “which was more than _you_ were.” 

Her sister steps back as if struck.  Dairine does not apologize.

That night, instead of sleeping, Dairine feverishly works and reworks the arithmetic of “a year of my life per shot” and “two years of your life, maybe five,” while holding back tears.  She desperately needs the numbers to be different—but numbers, like wizards, never lie.

 

Dairine stands by mutely as her father, jaw trembling, brushes the hair from her mother’s sleeping face.

Several galaxies over, a silicon-based species lives correctly, happily, as no other form of life has ever lived.

_It’s not fair_ , Dairine thinks.  _I helped_ make _them.  It’s not fair._

Of course, she is all too aware that she was born healthy, and gifted, and loved.

_Fairness_ , smiles the Shadow under her feet, _has never been my strong suit._

 

“You must take greater care,” says Carl, and she knows that he is so, so worried about her.  Both Seniors are, even when they cannot allow themselves to show it.  “Respect your strengths, and your limitations.  You come from a long and venerable tradition of New York wizardry.”

The reminder is meant to console her, but it feels like a condemnation.  She finds that she can no longer answer for herself, and it frightens her.  The last time Dairine had said so little, Carl had seen her for what she was and erased her.  She is still not convinced he won’t do it again.

She is still not convinced that he shouldn’t.

 

In reality, her spell had failed.  But it doesn’t this time.

Dairine stands still in the room and lets the universe spin around her.  Her power rises up in rings of crackling, searing light and descends upon the bed.

The spell takes.

Her mother rises, beaming.  Her face glows with health and comfort.  They walk hand-in-hand out of the fluorescent cold and into crisp, fresh air. 

“I always knew you would save me,” laughs her mother.  Dairine grins back.  She knows it is impossible, but this is a dream—she can do whatever she wants to here.

_Here_ , echoes her Shadow mockingly.  _Here_.

And Dairine tries not to wake up, but she always does.

 

Dairine did not mean the Oath when she took it.  Sometimes she is still not sure that she does, but she wants to.  She really _wants_ to.  Shouldn’t that count for _something_?

 “Have faith the size of a mustard seed, and you can move mountains.”  Her mother smiles bravely up from her hospital bed.

Mountains, _nothing_.  Dairine once stopped the _universe_ from _expanding_.  Her hands ball to fists at her sides.

Dairine is a wizard.  Her mother is not.  Dairine’s brain is extraordinary.  Her mother’s brain is killing her.

Could her mother have the right of it, despite all that?  How?  It doesn’t make sense.  None of it does.

_But it used to,_ Dairine thinks with a pang.  _It used to_.  When did it change?

 

Dairine’s red hair could set the world on fire.  Her little feet could stomp cities down to rubble.

She could tear apart that cold, grey hospital, wrench chunks of concrete away from the twisted, steel skeleton, open the dim wards to the blue sky and the harsh, cleansing light of the Sun.

But still, she cannot sweep up just a few, miniscule cells.

Too big and too small.  Dairine wonders if that is all she will ever be.

 

The doctors say it won’t be long.  Her mother no longer says anything.

Dairine runs out into her backyard and confronts Liused.

“You’re Nita’s friend,” she says out loud, “She learns from you.”  The words are meant as a request, but they come out as an accusation.  She glares upwards and awaits the rowan’s response.

_Patience_ , says the tree, in arrays of windswept branches, in patterns of dappled light.  _I was just like you, once: small, and potent, and bursting at the seams.  I too remember struggling and straining, buried in the muted dark.  What is meant to be will come to pass in due time.  Hold still.  Put down roots.  Orient yourself skyward._

For once, Dairine does as she is told.  She sits down at the trunk of the tree and turns her face toward the light.

There she waits, expecting growth.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I made the mistake of reading the ending to _The Wizard’s Dilemma_ in a crowded shopping area. I had been spoiled for the ending (they put it in the teaser for _A Wizard Alone_ , which I’d stupidly read), but it still blew me away. There were a lot of barely-contained cheers, followed by gasps of “No!” followed by bouts of silent, distressed reading. At one point (think Betty’s anguished scream), I had to put away my phone and walk a lap around the place, all while muttering, “Nope. Nope. Nope nope nope-nope-nope—” under my breath, before I could sit back down and resume. I’m pretty sure I freaked out some of the shoppers.


End file.
